Recently, while we were eating out at a local restaurant, someone actually approached our table and said that our family had the best behaved small children they had ever seen. They had a teenage son. Can you imagine? 😀

We have been doing a lot lately. I know this is true because when I look back at all the photos that I have taken, I see, objectively all the places we have been, things we have done, people we have seen, etc. However, it’s difficult to have the mental space to keep running tally of what exactly we have been up to.

This year, we are part of a charter. For those unfamiliar with homeschooling — hey I had NO idea what this was even after we started homeschooling– a charter is registered with the state of California, and works with parents to procure the materials they want, while maintaining supervision over the students, including meetings every so many school days, etc. All of these charters have different nuances. So for our charter, I have to submit grades, for example. Arbitrary. I definitely dislike.

However, as I submitted my grades for my 5 and 7 year old, I decided to include a brief overview of what we have been up to– I sometimes have to send this in/tell the teacher as well. What follows are excerpts of verbatim what I told our “teacher”:

We took a fieldtrip to Cal Academy, and the girls were volunteers in an Ocean Acidification experiment.

As part of this, they blew into straws, which then blew into the water that contained purple cabbage water, to demonstrate the production of additional CO2 in the ocean. It was really amazing, actually. We did a lot of other cool stuff there too. This was one of the first times that my 5 year old was engaged in what was going on in the exhibits.

For example, she grabbed a nearby guide of the different fish, and started pointing out which ones were in front of her. This was just one thing that stands out in my memory. Big changes!

We’ve been working on reading The Little House in the Big Woods, and watching some episodes of Little House on the Prairie.

Little House is a big thing in the local homeschool culture, perhaps the culture at large, I couldn’t say. (In fact, one of our friends recently visited the Laura Ingalls museum/site in Missouri! Jealous!) But when this book was assigned as a part of the Mentoring in the Classics cohort, I knew this was our best chance at getting the girls interested. I also happened to have ordered them sun bonnets to replace their floppy previous sun hats.

“Kindness and neighborliness are not just for Sundays, Laura.” We happened to pick up Season 2, which opens with the incredibly annoying and unpleasant storekeeper/neighbors protesting over the girls having an unfair advantage at collecting leaves by going on a camping trip. All I could think in my head was “Whatever!” The girls, LOVED watching. They continued to point out how mean and sour that family was, and how nice the Ingalls family was. It was neat to watch. There are still some stressful and probably advanced story lines in the show, so we won’t watch it too often, but I could really see how it made the pages of Little House come more alive for the kids.

Little House in the Big Woods was actually the book for December, so we are a bit behind, and still working on it. Just don’t tell the librarian!

[7 year old] is continuing to work on her times tables, and both girls like playing the chocolate chip Math game that we bought at the thrift store.

“5 times 5 is 25, mom. My friend told me, it’s true!” These days even my 3 year old asks me what 2 plus 2 is and then 4 plus 4. It’s interesting and exciting to them. I remember what that was like. Multiplication drills were fun because they were isolated, short, and I knew them. They have their time and place, and I’m glad my kids like completing them when they feel like it. Chocolate Chip Math is essentially a Math facts drill game with the guise of chocolate chip cookies. (I can’t link to it because it literally is not linkable, like I said my 5 year old picked it out at the thrift store!) I had nothing to do with the selection, just like I don’t usually have anything to with them playing it– Inspire Not Require.

We’ve also been playing LOTS of Horseopoly— the kids are obsessed with counting money and learning about how transactions work. My 7 year old is also very interested in horses.

We recently got some 15 penpals for the girls across the country! I think only 1 is homeschooled! So we bought paper, pens, envelopes, stamps, and after the girls wrote their letters, we took a trip to the Post Office to mail them. We have a map of the U.S. noted with all the states of where the friends live.

I am realizing now that at least two of these sibling penpal sets are homeschooled, oh well! This has been really neat because my 5 year old dictates her letters to me, then signs them, and the envelopes herself. My 7 year old writes the letters herself (we need to work on handwriting, this provides the least arbitrary setting), and also writes her name and the intended person’s name. She could also write the addresses, but I worry that the USPS would not be able to read them– which brings me to the point of this post, eventhough this is only the middle of all the things I have to say here:

A stamp has to be in the upper right hand corner of the envelope, or it will not get mailed.

Just like the recipient’s address must be neatly printed in the middle of the envelope, and the return address goes in the upper left hand corner.

I’ve long accepted the unschool/TJEd notion that requiring things arbitrarily isn’t necessary because actually living life presents opportunities for children to see firsthand that sometimes things MUST be done a certain way. Reflecting on this point I realized the envelope situation. My 5 year old started putting stamps wherever she pleased, like stickers. I had to move the stamps or else who knows what bureaucratic situation would have her letters cast aside. In order for them to reach their destination, the stamp needs to go where it needs to go, because. That’s it. Life Lesson. Sometimes rules are arbitrary and we MUST follow them if we want to accomplish our goal.

We’ve also started listening to many different History audio CDs that we have downloaded through Freegal (a free library service). We have listened to Greek Myths and also Story of the World.

This is a BIG thing for us because my 5 year old has up until now HATED audio books. Like the second I put them on, she literally starts screaming, “NO!!!!!!! Turn this off, it’s STUPID! I HATE IT!!!!” I posted this in a TJEd #Fail post on facebook recently. Well, these days she is actually tolerating AND LISTENING TO Audio CDs!

The other day we were listening to SOTW (Story of the World), and it was talking about Ancient China, and how they were trying to make gold, but one day instead discovered gun powder. I looked in my rearview mirror to see my 5 year old with a suprised look on her face, and then she said (after the narrator) “It exploded!!” Oh! Also, my 7 year old has begun her Mandarin Rosetta Stone study, will have to blog about that experience later!

If you haven’t heard about Freegal, you MUST check it out. You can download FREE audio tracks. They have music, ebooks, and also these Greathall CDs narrated by the homeschool celeb Jim Weiss— whom, incidentally I also did not know was so well known. Guys, check it, he is a professional story teller!!!! Talk about a neat calling in life! And we love him, he’s great.

So back to Freegal, we downloaded CDs on Greek Mythology, the Old Testament, Jewish Holidays, and Galileo thus far. There is a daily download limit, so I have to go back and get a few more tracks at a time, that I then burn for car trips. I am LOVING it, and I think the kids are too!

I have so many other things I want to say, but I still need to go back and add pictures, and I have big plans for our Kidschool today, so that’s all for now! Check back later this week for more TJEd posts!

I think I mentioned in one of my prior posts our visit to the local farm. I thought id revisit that experience for a sec, because some cool stuff happened, eventhough my kids were giving me a rough time most of the time! Plus we got to see 3 1 day old lambs!

We saw some animals, etc. but more important to me, I got to talk to some experienced hs moms about what works for them. I talked to one unschooling mom with delightful children, and got some great perspective on what that looks like. I also got to talk with a veteran Charlotte mason-esque mom with the best daughters. It was reaffirming, but also it’s interesting to hear about our different walks.

What was the funniest thing to me was that the kids spent about. 30 minutes looking at farm animals, then for the remaining hour and a half we were there, they were just playing in a big field and checking stuff out. Around the time we were about to leave, the older kids had been lifting the younger ones into a low tree branch to “row the boat.” then a group of about 10 of them were huddled around a hole in the ground, claiming a mouse had just run in!! My 5 yr old may or may not have been with a group of other girls trying to hit the roaming turkeys with a stick. Apparently she wanted to n ow what was going to happen.

We had a chance to schedule a get together with our homeschool group this past week to check out Muir Woods. It is a local national park, consisting of hundreds of acres of diverse natural lands.

Perhaps most breathtaking though, and probably what the park is best known for, is the extensive amount of California Redwoods. The absolute beauty of the tree giants are overwhelming. I didn’t have the opportunity to attend any “nature” camps as a child, so my first experience in this type of setting was as a cabin leader for such a camp when I was in high school. I therefore cannot even imagine how mesmerizing the giants must be for the kids.

One of the most interesting things I learned on the trip, aside from the calming affect of nature (which is a bit of an understatement when juxtaposed to how wound up seeing their friends made my kids), was that the park was dedicated by a group of UN delegates a month after FDR’s death. Apparently, the hope was that the transformative power of the natural miracles of life and nature would contribute to the goals of achieving world peace and collaboration. I didn’t get a chance to read anything as closely as I would have liked, so I will have to look into the further details regarding the dedication of the park, but I thought that was really special.

Additionally, another of the signs I had a few seconds to scan, stated that redwoods have been around for as long as 65 million years ago–the time of the dinosaurs. Apparently, while meteors caused a massive shift in the climate, which led to the extinction of most other animal and plant life, the redwoods persevered! Hello, how come no one ever told me redwoods are a relic from the time of dinosaurs?! So cool!

My only complaint is that it was crowded! Can you imagine, a forest/park being crowded? It almost felt like we were at a theme park like Disneyland rather than a redwood forest, but it wasn’t too congested beyond the parking lot, and it made me happy to see so many people enjoying the outdoors–particularly the great amount of children of all ages.

Anyway, there were so many neat things there, and also that transpired between the littles themselves and with the adults, that it was a truly heartwarming experience. I cannot wait to go back!

Note: I just wanted to let my readers know that my primary means of blogging at the moment is through my WordPress app. This means that I cant preview pictures after adding them to posts, and am struggling with adding links. I hope to use my computer more regularly in the future, so as to make my posts more aesthetically pleasing and navigable. In the mean time, thanks for reading!

The first year of my son’s life, beginning in the May of 2011, was incredibly hard. Having only relatively recently moved to the area, aside from family, we didn’t have too many close friends to interact with. Additionally, the friends I did have were almost always busy because they are just so awesome that everyone wants to spend time with that.

Thus, if you look at the calendar before we decided to take a test run at homeschooling, we *might* have a scheduled playdate maybe once a week, more likely once every two weeks or more often. Sure, we would get out of the house, usually to a place like Target, or to visit family, or to the park, but very seldom would I have the opportunity to interact with other moms, or have planned get togethers with other friends.

I did figure out that the most integral part of making friends is pursuing them, so we did have the opportunity to spend some quality time with my oldest’s preschool friends outside of school. However, given the fact that this only constituted about a handful of families, scheduling conflicts and family life often limited our interactions.

Thus, prior to this summer, which was when I started to seriously consider homeschooling, my daily calendar was pretty empty. Once I came across our absolutely wonderful homeschool group, things changed dramatically. (More on our amazinggroup later).

Here is the annotated version of our summer:

June:

Our first meeting was at a local park playdate, which was attended by 17 families (the group has a total membership somewhere around 75 families right now)

Group event at a local science museum/aquarium, which included lectures on Earthquakes and later snakes. Went inside butterfly terrarium, huge aquarium, and many other amazing exhibits. Had the opportunity to spend 1:1 time with two different moms and their similarly aged kids.

Group event at different science museum with other (significantly smaller) homeschool group. Had the opportunity to briefly interact with another mom and her young daughter.

Went berry picking, had the opportunity to get to know two different mothers and their children in addition to several other members of the group. Girls gorged themselves on not quite ripe organic berries.

Many other playdates with non homeschooler friends. Having group scheduled activities inspired me to regularly contact our other friends for get togethers at local parks and children’s venues.

(All this, and we had only joined the group/preschool ended mid month!)

July:

Tons of park playdates/group get togethers, one of which was at an amazing city park, recently subject to a multi-million dollar renovation, another of which presented the opportunity to explore a dried up creek bed with an almost 5 year old as our tour guide/expert.

Attended two different botanical gardens on their free admission days, one with each of the two groups.

Began scheduling playdates with friends we met through our homeschool group.

Attended local zoo get together with two mom friends and their kids from homeschool group.

Had opportunity to create “messy art” at event regularly hosted by mom member of our homeschool group.

Attended local children’s museum with group, which boasted ridiculously high up slide playground out front, and rode carousel in honor of younger daughter’s third birthday with our friends 🙂

Listened to avant garde Jazz and other jazz recordings as chosen by our local librarian.

Truly discovered the potential of a good librarian and how amazing our local library is. Years of performing my own legal research made me oblivious to the absolute joy it is being able to watch my oldest daughter ask another adult to help her select titles based on her interests.

Group and individual visits to local awesome children’s museum.

Playdates doubled up on some days.

August:

Visited the two botanical gardens with our groups again!

More messy art!

Went to Disneyland! Ok, that one’s not really related, but it was so much fun. I’m not really a “Disney” person, but I really like Disneyland. Maybe even love California Adventure!

Visited our favorite local children’s museum with 10 or so families from our group.

Visited local historic farm with one of our friends from the group.

Attended various park get togethers

Got big girl a library card! She even got a pin stating the fact 🙂

…and can you believe the month isn’t even half over? We’ve got homeschool events planned at parks, local hiking areas, museums, and even a National Park Trail

With all this excitement, particularly in contrast to the prior unscheduled year, you can imagine how easily swayed I have become to the homeschool experiment. I’m certain the outings will elucidate the abundance of opportunity for socialization, both for my kids and for us moms! And it has also shown me the opportunity for education by osmosis. My oldest daughter played a computer game at a local science museum that talked about/demonstrated how scientists use viruses to make gold nanowires–girl is not even 5 years old yet!?

I am absolutely thrilled about the upcoming year(s), and I know that my enthusiasm is contagious. I can only imagine what the coming months will bring, and I am so happy to be able to share the journey with my littles.